OPEN SOURCE LICENSES CONTD.

THE Q PUBLIC LICENSE, ARTISTIC LICENSE (PERL), CREATIVE COMMONS

THE Q PUBLIC LICENSE VERSION
Non-copyleft License.
 The Qt Project governs the open source development of Qt. It allows anybody wanting to contribute to join
the effort, through a meritocratic structure of approvers and maintainers. All development will be driven by
the people contributing to the project.
 The Qt Project is a meritocratic consensus-based community interested in Qt. Anyone who shares that interest
can join the community, participate in its decision-making processes, and contribute to Qt’s development.
Governance model
 The main objectives of the Governance Model are to:

• Put decision power in the hands of the community, i.e. the people who contribute to the Project's success
• Make it easy to understand how to get involved and make a difference
 The five levels of involvement: Users, Contributors, Approvers, Maintainers and Chief Maintainer are
described below.
STRUCTURE
 Users - Users are community members who have
a need for the Project. They are the most
 Maintainers - Maintainers are recognized
important members of the community and without
them the Project would have no purpose. Anyone leaders in their area and have been identified
can be a User; there are no special requirements. as owners of a component of the Project
code.
 Contributors - Contributors are community
members who provide significant input to the  Chief Maintaners - The Chief Maintainer
Project. Anyone can be a Contributor – there is no leads the Maintainer group, coordinating and
selection process. facilitating its activities. He / she sets the
 Approvers - Approvers are contributors who have overall vision and direction of the Qt Project.
shown that they are committed to the Project and
its objectives and perform an essential role
safeguarding its long-term success.
ARTISTIC LICENSE
 The Artistic (or Perl Artistic) License is named because of its stated intention to allow the initial
developer to maintain “artistic” control over the licensed software and derivative works created from
it. The Perl License is substantially identical to the Artistic License, but it includes an additional
paragraph, which provides another option for commercial distribution.

 Developed by Larry Wall in the late 1980s, Perl is a ubiquitous programming language, based on C
(among other languages) and is found frequently in UNIX and UNIX-based systems. It is omnipresent
on the World Wide Web, with thousands, if not millions, of web sites running combinations of Perl
scripts over Apache web servers. Part of Perl’s strength as a language is its ability to tie together
different programs and languages that were not initially intended to work together. Because of Perl’s
ubiquity and because Perl is licensed under both the Artistic License and the GPL, progra
ARTISTIC LICENSE CONTD.
 Unfortunately, the Artistic License is notoriously vague and confusing. This description and
commentary will, hopefully, dispel at least some of that confusion.
 Like the MPL and the QPL already discussed, the Artistic License was designed for use in
connection with a particular program—Perl—and not as a generally applicable license, like
the BSD or MIT Licenses, or the GPL, although it certainly could be used apart from Perl.
 This license establishes the terms under which a given free software Package may be
copied, modified, distributed, and/or redistributed. The intent is that the Copyright Holder
maintains some artistic control over the development of that Package while still keeping
the Package available as open source and free software.
 You are always permitted to make arrangements wholly outside of this license directly with
the Copyright Holder of a given Package. If the terms of this license do not permit the full
use that you propose to make of the Package, you should contact the Copyright Holder and
seek a different licensing arrangement.
 CREATIVE COMMONS
 The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights
reserved” setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to
large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their
creative work. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a
pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the
boundaries of copyright law.

 All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps
creators — we call them licensors if they use our tools — retain copyright while allowing others to
copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially. Every Creative
Commons license also ensures licensors get the credit for their work they deserve. Every Creative
Commons license works around the world and lasts as long as applicable copyright lasts (because
they are built on copyright). These common features serve as the baseline, on top of which licensors
can choose to grant additional permissions when deciding how they want their work to be used.